Rich Brennan

Senior Strategy Consultant

Rich is a top federal lobbyist and health policy expert in Washington, D.C. With over 20 years of experience, he is a nationally known lobbyist, health policy expert, thought leader, speaker, and proponent of the advancement of technologies in healthcare. Rich has longstanding relationships with members of Congress, Governors, and Administration officials. He has also led numerous industry consensus efforts, developed policy positions, and secured government support and private investments in technology products and solutions, such as, electronic health records, telehealth, electronic visit verification technologies, and remote physiologic monitoring technologies. He is knowledgeable on Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, advanced payment models, managed health care and digital health technologies. He also serves as a subject matter health policy expert to federal agencies, including HHS, CMS, ONC, FDA, FCC and VA, and congressional committees.

In addition to his senior strategy consulting position with the Loran Group, Rich is the President of Innovate Health LLC, a Washington, D.C. based consulting firm that provides strategic advisory services to first-mover health care providers, health plans, investors, and digital health companies on connected health technologies, healthcare innovations, and government policies and regulations. Rich has a thorough understanding of the federal process and political landscape, maintains strong working relationships with members of Congress and their staff, develops strategic plans to accomplish legislative priorities, arranges access to policy makers, manages relationships with trade associations and industry coalitions, and advises on regulations and solutions. Rich also utilizes his experience with the highly regulated health care industry to harmonize the timing of investments and deployments of digital health products and services.

Rich previously held numerous executive roles at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice representing the interests of 33,000 home health care agencies and digital health technology vendors. As Sr. Vice President of Government Affairs and Technology Policy and as Executive Director of the Home Care Technology Association of America, he was primarily responsible for managing national and state government affairs, including the execution of industry priorities on payment policies, certification requirements, adjusted reimbursement for rural health settings, pre-claim review documentation requirements, quality measures and advanced payment models.

Throughout his career, Rich has created opportunities for health care providers and digital health companies to partner together and benefit from nationwide investments in data driven models of care. He led industry consensus efforts on the management of chronic health conditions, transitions of care, and the exchange of digital health information, including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Promoting Interoperability Program, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), 2015 Edition Certified Electronic Health Record Technologies (CEHRT), the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application program interfaces (APIs) for exchanging health data, and the integration of telehealth, remote patient monitoring, health apps, and consumer reported data.

Rich is actively involved with industry associations and serves on numerous committees including the Health Information and Management Systems Society, the Connected Health Initiative, the Alliance for Connected Care, the Long Term Post-Acute Care HIT Collaborative, and the National Association for the Support of Long Term Care.

Rich holds a M.A. from Georgetown University in Communications, Culture and Technology and a B.A. from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts with Minors in Communications and Political Science.